An “open book test” means students are allowed to use their books, and an “open notes” test means they’re allowed to use their notes. I’ve become fond of “open friend” quizzes. My students took one today.The point of an open friend quiz is to serve as a formative assessment, meaning that its job is to show students what they know and what they don’t, and to help them clarify their fragile understanding of what they barely (or almost) know. Students work in groups of up to three, and can use any resources they want—class notes, worksheets, textbook, etc., and they can ask me questions about how to do the problems.
The questions on an open friend quiz are a mix of some easy, straightforward questions, and some challenging questions that push the limits of what they can figure out. The easier questions are much like what I would give on an individual summative assessment (regular test). Their purpose is to make sure the students can do what they’ll ultimately need to be able to do on their own. The challenging questions serve the purpose of sparking discussion within groups, and getting them to interact with me about how to set up the problems. This allows me to scaffold the answers according to the needs of each group, and it gives me a very good sense of how well each student understands the problems and how to set them up and solve them, and where the trouble spots are.
My students love open friend quizzes. They’re low pressure—I’m happy to help them if they get stuck. They almost always result in a good grade. They learn how to do the things they’re not sure of, and are much more ready for the summative test as a result. In fact, I’d venture to say that almost as much learning happens during an open friend quiz as during the entire 1–2 weeks of lecture/discussion/homework leading up to it.
Afterwards, students tend to be tired and a bit frazzled, but almost all of them leave the quiz feeling good about how they did and what they learned. The experience is reminiscent of my mother’s philosophy about teaching: “You’re all going to get an A. This quiz is what you have to do to earn it.”
Jeff, When you do friend quizzes do the students pick their groups? I want to try this with my hs history class.
ktb
I’ve always let my students pick, and it seems to work out pretty well. The stronger students tend to work with each other, which is actually a good thing because it means in groups of weaker students, everyone needs to contribute. I go around helping them during the quiz, so they all manage to get where they need to be in the end.